I am thoroughly disappointed in EBMUD’s expectations to keep its revenues constant in this economy.

Everyone else feels the pinch. It, a monopoly, feels entitled to simply raise prices to make up for lost volume?

It’s basic economics: If there’s less demand for a product, prices should decline.

EBMUD seems to think it can raise rates when times are good (because there’s so much demand) and when times are bad (to keep up revenues).

It’s extremely good and necessary for the environment and in general that consumers are lowering their water usage and are conserving.

This should rightly result in lower water bills for them to keep up the incentive and willingness to save.

If the bills remain about the same, this sends the wrong signal. I’d rather have a drought declared for longer in order to preserve natural resources than make higher water prices the new standard.

Consumers should be rewarded for doing the right thing, and all of us can use some saved dollars from lower water bills, even if EBMUD might have to live with slightly lower revenues and/or look for other efficiencies.

Bay Area households should not be asked to shoulder a hidden utility bailout.

Franziska Raedeker

Berkeley

Apology overdue

This is in response to the April 16 Times editorial, “Discipline overdue,” regarding, yet again, Sgt. Derwin Longmire, Yusuf Bey IV and the Chauncey Bailey homicide case.

I, and many other caring friends, are disgusted and fed up with the never-ending onslaught of malicious attacks on Sgt. Longmire.

Longmire, a veteran Oakland police officer of more than 20 years, has, without hesitation, put his life on the line to serve and protect the people and the city of Oakland. He has done so with pride, dignity and honor.

He also has a strict code of work ethics. Those of us who know and believe in Longmire know he would never, under any circumstances, sacrifice or jeopardize his unblemished career with the Oakland Police Department or the future of his family by protecting Yusuf Bey IV, or anyone else, during a homicide investigation or any other kind of police investigation.

So, in truth, what’s really overdue here is not discipline for Sgt. Longmire but, instead, a loud, thunderous apology from the Chauncey Bailey Project and the Times for the pain and damage your poisonous twisted printed words and innuendos have caused him and his family.

He fails to mention that Obama won 365 electoral votes (what really counts) to 173 for John McCain. In the 2000 election, George W. Bush lost the popular vote and narrowly won the electoral vote, 271 to 266.

In 2004, Bush narrowly won the popular vote against John Kerry, 51-49 percent, and 286 electoral votes. Bush called that victory his mandate.

Picking apart all of Laurence’s barely baked statements would take a full newspaper page. Like Rush Limbaugh and Thomas Sowell, he takes a grain of sand (truth) and builds a sand castle of fanatically conservative fantasies.

Sowell compares Obama’s eloquence to Hitler. Why did he choose Hitler instead of Martin Luther King or John F. Kennedy? Limbaugh and Lawrence call Obama a socialist, so, by their logic, that makes Bush a fascist dictator.

They chide Obama for not fixing in two months what Bush and company did wrong for eight years. These are subversive diatribes, not constructive criticism. America, love it or move to Alaska.

John Carr

Clayton

School reforms

I have three children in Mt. Diablo Unified School District schools. If I thought money would solve our school problems, I’d double-down on Measure D. But it won’t. Here’s what will:

Put all the schools in Walnut Creek together! MDUSD is a bloated, unresponsive far-flung behemoth. All Walnut Creek deserves a school district that serves local needs.

Fire and hire to make MDUSD competent with money. Huge fines and IRS audits just take more tax dollars from the kids.

Give us vouchers. Private schools consistently show better educational results with half the money of public schools. Don’t kid yourself into thinking a monopoly has any real incentive to change, no matter how much we scream.

Release the California Teachers Association stranglehold. This union confiscates teachers’ money to support its own political causes. We can’t get rid of bad teachers.

We can’t incentivize good ones. Test scores have consistently dropped as the CTA has gotten more powerful. (A really good book: A Worm in the Apple, by Peter Brimelow.)

The best way to help the schools right now is to donate to the local Parent Faculty Clubs. They’re very careful with money, and you can see exactly where it’s going.

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